Often times in my games, I work around and smoothen out everything before adding the main features to the game. There have been a few exceptions to this rule but for the most part it as held true.

And given that we are now 44 updates in a lot of ground work has been laid for the main features, and lots of smoothing has been done. So I am proud to announce one of the main features of the game: Economy & Resources.

I've designed a system where cities now each have their own wealth that contributes to the income of your country. This means that newly captured land the cities there may be poorer or richer than your own cities.

First I fixed the loading screen. It only showed for the Host (All other players just froze on the main menu while loading the main game).

But more importantly, I finished making the models for the majority of the games units:

These units are not currently to scale, scale is applied when they are first created (from their mod file). I've also got plans on what you will be able to research and in what order:

It's not the fanciest picture but it'll do!

I've also managed to add another 30 fps to the game by optimizing some scripts, and finally I smoothed out camera movement! With this new camera update I also changed the camera mod file! But you'll see that later.

I've also added what I call "Height based rotation" which is when in most RTS games you zoom in a bunch and your camera rotates so it's not facing straight down.

This new smooth update with the height-based rotation makes the game not only feel more professional, but just overall better. Seeing as how camera movement is the main way the game is presented, it's very important that I get these sorts of updates in.

Monday, September 18, 2017

Screw trading
I have spent nearly a week trying to get trading to work. Currently its state is that only non-hosts can send trade requests to the host, but they can't send requests to each other and the host can't send requests to them.

Every time I feel I've isolated the issue I find that it never ends up solving it. I feel that I have a general understanding as to WHY it isn't working, but as to how to fix it so far I've been clueless, and after spending nearly a day on the internet (since all previous days of just me trying had failed) I still failed to find a solution to the problem.

The problem with networking
The current way networking/multiplayer works (using the Unity Networking extension I use called Photon) and how it works with (what i believe to be) the majority of networking solutions on most games, is that most networking is handled by a "host". It is their computer's requirement to receive data, send it to the cloud and then the cloud sends it back to all other clients. But it is still the hosts responsibility to send those messages up.

This works very well with things like spawning in units, tracking their location on the map, or keeping track of simple stats.

Users send their trade data to a component that then sends the info to the person who needs to receive the trade request. But for some reason networking has decided that only the host can send messages through this component and therefore only the host can send trade requests. It's a massive barricade in networking code and something I'm working hard to fix.

Plans for the future(As a disclosure, all the work on this project - including models and scripts have been solely done by me - my friend observed through Skype Screen share).
In order to teach one of my friends how to program in Unity C# we began making a simple obstacle course game. In this game, you would just have a player that could hit red box's (lasers or floors) and he would take damage. You could also find purple orbs to heal you, and you would touch yellow boxes as checkpoints.

Then we said "why not add enemies to make it harder" so we decided to make some enemies that would shoot at the player.

Then we said "why not make the scene better" so instead of just taking place in a generic obstacle course, I spent a lot of time designing an underground sort-of 'hallway scene'. This scene was to be a long hallway where you had to jump over obstacles and avoid getting shot by enemies.

Then my friend suggested armor so I added an armor pickup. And then I figured, while if the player picks up armor then he might as well have to pick up his weapon too. I wanted to make an armory room for this so I added to the start of the hallway a large room which I filled with boxes and lighting.

Then I kept adding to the underground bunker until I had created a facility with lots of different models and things like doors and lockers.

At this point, I had added "seeking" to the enemy because it was no longer one big hallway so the enemy should if he loses sight of you have to "look for" you.

At this point I had also added health pickups (First aid kit) and had added magazine pickups. The world was now a underground bunker (unifnished, only like 3 rooms and the entrance hallway). It was at this point that I decided that the game had taken a new direction.

I'm now working on an "outside of the bunker" and I've decided that the game is going to be an open world first person shooter where the supplies you needed (medical, attachments, ammo, guns) would have to be acquired yourself by going to various locations or doing various tasks.

Currently, I've added a single attachment you can pickup (Flashlight attachment) and there is still only one gun and one ammo type in the game (AK47 - 7.62)

But it has great potential. This is all still being used to educate my friend, but I've decided to pick this up as a full game project.

DISCLAIMER:
The majority of my efforts are still to be focused on the war game. All this just means that once the game has released on Steam tha I will have my next project to work on. And don't worry about me giving up on the war game, it's almost done - it just needs a few core features implemented (as well as some networking fixed) and it'll be ready for Steam!

Thanks for reading (especially if you actually got this far), feel free to leave a comment, and I'll see you in the next one!

Friday, September 15, 2017

Its been awhile since the last update, and this is still not an update. I've been working very hard to fix one of my previous implemented features (Trading). It works locally but not over the internet. For some reason players are having difficulty communicating with the server in order to receive trade information (Who sent it, what resources are being requested, etc.)

But I've done a lot of other work as well. So when I finish this trading problem there will be some big updates already written and lined up to release afterward. But right now thinks are on hold as I try to fix the trading problem.

Thanks for reading, feel free to leave a comment, and I'll see you in the next one!

Monday, September 11, 2017

I've changed the way the game displays manpower and population. Rather than displaying an exact value the game will round & use letters to represent the number.

Now rather than showing

342,600,000 It will say 342.6M

And if it's less than 1,000,000 (for example: 500,000) it would say 500k.

But the most important thing I've added is: Research!

Like all other parts of my game it is heavily based around mod support. Research tiles are generated based on the .txt files and then put into a window:

Then you can click on the research and it will give you general info about the research (defined in the .txt files) like the description which includes unlocked units and buildings, as well as other details. And finally you can then start research.

You have two research slots to use (AKA you can be researching two things at any given time).

To make writing mod files easier I made so you don't have to directly list what research does. In fact a research mod file you only really need a name, description, icon, and the time it will take to research.

The units will have "Research requirement" parameters themselves so rather than you having to list off and search for units and buildings from the research mod file, you just have to list it as a requirement under the affected item (be it building or unit).

Thanks for reading, feel free to leave a comment, and I'll see you in the next one!